Thursday, February 24, 2011

Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators (and the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)

Yup.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, reports Rolling Stone.

RS reports:

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

Those singled out in the campaign, according to RS, included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

Scenario 1: You are asked to invade a foreign country to rape, pillage and destroy while spreading your country's imperial dominance far and wide. Is this crossing a line?

NO!

Scenario 2: You are asked to "psy-ops" the minds of visiting US politicians, who, by the way, are already being psy-opsed back home in the good ol' US of A every single day by virtue of the fact that they're unthinking puppets for the power elite who control them. Is this crossing a line?